As long as immigrants are welcome in this nation, I believe the church will continue to grow, and secularism will not enjoy the unhindered progress toward the secular utopia it seems to be enjoying right now.

Timothy Keller once noted that people often abandon the Christian faith without ever truly experiencing it. I wonder if some atheists have abandoned Christian faith without ever encountering its intellectual integrity.

We get off track and end up floundering - even undermining our own integrity - when we try to mimic the world. What we need is to stay true to our creeds, confessions, catechisms, and liturgies, as well as the intellectual and moral worlds they open up for us in a world that is more and more narrow.

I was trained to epitomize the urban church planter. Admittedly, I’ve got a beard, curly mustache, and roast my own coffee. However, I quickly learned that the pursuit of reconciliation is a commitment to a long-term struggle for survival. Urban ministry is not sexy or glamorous—its a grind.

Social media is still a mess of raw emotions and memes. Lines have been drawn more clearly than they were before. And I'm sure this is going to be a tense Thanksgiving for many families. How do Christians respond?

The call for the people of God in Jesus’ lordship is to continue to seek out the low and the poor, to find refuge for the sojourners and refugees, comfort for the sick and the confused, to fight for the life of the unborn and the born. It is a call not to hide from the decisions of the world but to be the truth in the dark, no matter the situation. Jesus is still Lord.